Fr Fabrizio Pesce

Anger and forgiveness

A young girl who was writing a paper for school came to her father and asked, "Dad, what is the difference between anger and exasperation?"

The father replied, "It is mostly a matter of degree. Let me show you what I mean."

With that the father went to the telephone and dialed a number at random. To the man who answered the phone, he said, "Hello, is Melvin there?"

The man answered, "There is no one living here named Melvin. Why don't you learn to look up numbers before you dial?".

"See," said the father to his daughter. "That man was not a bit happy with our call. He was probably very busy with something and we annoyed him. Now watch...."

The father dialed the number again. "Hello, is Melvin there?"asked the father.

"Now look here!" came the heated reply. "You just called this number and I told you that there is no Melvin here! You've got lot of guts calling again!" The receiver slammed down hard.

The father turned to his daughter and said, "You see, that was anger. Now I'll show you what exasperation means."

He dialed the same number, and when a violent voice roared, "Hello!"

The father calmly said, "Hello, this is Melvin. Have there been any calls for me?"

Anger and exasperation. At a first glance, today’s gospel seems to focus just on forgiveness. However, I would probably say that in order to understand what forgiveness means to us, we might have to take a step back and look more carefully at the role of anger and exasperation in our daily life. I’m sure you are aware of the many anger management classes that are out there and also of the films that are more making fun of it. Anger seems to be something that needs to be managed rather than understood. We take for granted that there are people with bad temper as a natural condition that has to be controlled in order to reduce the negative impact on their lives and the lives of those who are the object of their rage. Anger is just there. There is nothing you can do about it other than control it.

The biblical approach to this human passion is rather different. Anger is described as a foolish thing and linked to the sinner. How interesting! I say this because in more than one occasion in the Bible anger is seen as something good. Moses is furious when he comes down the mountain to find the Israelites worshiping a golden calf. Also, in the old testament God’s responses to Israel’s wrongdoing is very often anger. In the new testament, we all remember the famous scene of Jesus being angry at the merchants in the temple of Jerusalem. The question would be: “Is anger something good or bad? Unfortunately, there isn’t a straightforward answer. For instance, Jesus’ angry reaction to the merchants in the temple of Jerusalem looks more like an expression/reaction to injustice rather than a destructive expression of vice. So there is a good anger. The reality is that anger is something more complex that what we think. When we talk about the passion of anger we are not dealing with one simple emotion or a character trait but something more subtle and complex. It is something that it is not good or bad, but can be on some occasions excellent but on other occasions positively evil.

In his book “Healing Agony”, Stephen Cherry recounts of one time when conducting a parish retreat on the subject of forgiveness, he invited participants to list some of the different expressions that are commonly used to express the state of being angry. And they came up with the most interesting ones: ‘my blood boiled’, ‘I was spitting feathers’, ‘I was furious’, ‘she flew off the handle’, ‘I saw red’, ‘He went ape (or bananas), ‘she spat out her dummy’ and/or ‘threw all her toys out of the pram’. I’m sure you can add on other very colourful expressions. What striked Stephen Cherry more than their creativity is how much the participants enjoyed themselves. “They loved it -he says- there was real energy in the room. Anger then cannot just be described as an emotion. It’s more than that! It’s a cathartic emotion, because can have a cleansing and a healing effect; it can get something ‘out of the system’. See, very often we are tempted to airbrush Jesus’ or Paul’s anger out of the new testament, which would probably result in a distortion of their passion and personality. Anger seems to be integral to seeking God’s kingdom. Now there is certainly a danger involved in expressing our anger. I don’t know if you had that experience, but when I’m angry -especially when I witness a situation of injustice- I tend to feel strong and righteous, my defences drop and I become vulnerable. Anger threaten to boil into aggression before I can fully appreciate what is going on. Anger makes us focus on the present moment. We desire so intensely to deal with the cause of our irritation or harm that we forget the possibility of consequences -whether for the person to whom we are about the lash out at, or for ourselves. We say things that we normally would not dare to say. Paradoxically, anger connects with courage, but can be foolhardiness when pushed beyond certain limits of proportionality.

When anger crosses the threshold of proportionality it can become exasperation that could potentially lead to a desire of revenge.

When Peter asks Jesus: “Lord, how often must I forgive my brother if he wrongs me? As often as seven times?”, forgiveness is out of discussion. The point he makes is about exasperation. In other words, Peter is asking: “Is there a limit to my patience -especially when someone who I forgave keep repeating the same sin against me over and over again to the point of infuriating me? What do I do when someone gets me to the point of exasperation?” So the point is not the sin of the other person against me, but the anger that is provoked in me by the other person, which represents the real problem here. Anger management is then more about forgiving than managing our anger. Because when we forgive we have to overcome our anger which is appropriate, the anger which is an ‘intelligent’ response to injustice. Now we can really understand Jesus’ answer to Peter: “Not seven, I tell you, but seventy-seven times”, which means always. Anger cannot limit forgiveness because when we got to the point the exasperation that would mean just one thing: anger has become foolhardiness, recklessness, grudge and desire of revenge. The story of the king and his servants -we have just heard today- is about understanding and differentiating good from bad anger. The king is wise not because he is not angry, but because his anger is proportional to the debt of his servant. The servant’s anger, instead, is completely disproportionate in regard to his fellow servant’s debt. Cleverly enough, the gospel puts in both servants’ mouth exactly the same words when pleading for mercy: “Give me time and I will pay you”, highlighting that the king’s reaction is hugely different from the servant’s reaction.

We may have to bear in mind that anger is a pre-reflective reaction to a situation. A surge of adrenaline has been precipitated for some reason and we choose not to run or fly but to stand and fight. This makes anger an unreliable emotion. Just because I’m angry it doesn’t necessarily mean that someone has done something wrong, or that an injustice has been perpetrated. The gospel’s story is also suggesting a very good antidote to balance our anger, to learn how to read our anger and respond to the intuitions and perceptions that they carry and hold. The antidote is called empathy or what we commonly call “putting yourself in someone else’s shoes”.

“You wicked servant,” he said “I cancelled all that debt of yours when you appealed to me. Were you not bound, then, to have pity on your fellow servant just as I had pity on you?”

That’s what is Jesus’ story about: I can understand the good anger when I understand that the forgiving love that I receive from God is infinitely superior to the forgiving love that I give. God says to us: “how dare you being so angry at your brother when I restrained my anger toward you? God’s wisdom comes to us to recognise the bad anger, and at the same time being able to use the good anger and balance it with his wisdom, which will lead us to have a forgiving heart. A forgiving heart will always teach us that there are available other options than vengeance, hatred or bitterness.